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KRAFT NABISCO CHAMPIONSHIP

April 4, 2008

Heather Young

RANCHO MIRAGE, CALIFORNIA

ASHLEY CUSHMAN: Great round and you're tied for the lead heading into Saturday. Can you talk about how you're feeling after playing like this for two days in the row and being tied for the lead going into the weekend?
HEATHER YOUNG: Well, it feels good, but it's just halfway over. So, you know, I don't have any expectations for the weekend. I'm just going to try to keep my head up. I got off to a rough start today and I just tried to keep my mood up, and it served me well.
ASHLEY CUSHMAN: Speaking of that rough start, let's go over that first bogey on the 11th hole.
HEATHER YOUNG: Yeah, I just 3-putted. I was behind the hole and it looked fast, and it wasn't.
ASHLEY CUSHMAN: How far was the first putt?
HEATHER YOUNG: 30, 35 feet.
ASHLEY CUSHMAN: The double bogey on 12?
HEATHER YOUNG: I hit a drive in the rough and could not get to the green, and then hit it from the bunker, hit it over and chipped up and 2-putted. So just a lot of shots. I missed the putt for five.
ASHLEY CUSHMAN: Then your first birdie on 17.
HEATHER YOUNG: Yeah, I hit a 5-iron to four feet and made the putt.
18, I actually drove it in the bunker, so I had to lay up, but had a pretty good number, 105 yards, and I hit a wedge to about eight feet.
2, I hit an 8-iron to six feet and made the putt.
4, a gap wedge to about 11 feet.
7, I hit an 8-iron to 24 feet and made the putt.

Q. I see you were born in Washington, D.C.; did you get out of there in a hurry?
HEATHER YOUNG: I lived in southern Maryland till I was three; and then moved to Delaware when I was 16 -- this is going to be a longer answer than you wanted. Then moved to Edmond, Oklahoma and lived there for ten years and now I've been in Texas for about six.

Q. Where in Texas?
HEATHER YOUNG: La Plata.

Q. Let's say somebody is ten strokes behind going into the final round, do you think they have a chance to win in this competition?
HEATHER YOUNG: Well, sure, because I think if you're playing well, you can shoot 6-under on any golf course. If you're playing well, and I think the leader is not playing well, they could easily shoot 4- or 5-over.
It would depend on what kind of people were in between you, but this is a tough golf course, and I mean, just because you play well one day doesn't mean you're going to play great the next day, and vice versa. You could have a bad day, and then if you're on that day -- I mean, if you're playing well, you could shoot 6-under on any course.

Q. When you start out struggling, what do you do to get it back? What do you do to get your focus back?
HEATHER YOUNG: Well, today I had a phrase that I kept telling myself; it's just a work-in-progress, so it's not one hole, one shot, or one round. I've been struggling for about a year and I'm just trying -- and golf in general, and especially professional golf is just a work-in-progress, and you've just got to keep going.

Q. Obviously tied for the lead, there would be expectations and patience no matter what tomorrow, but to play with Lorena given the way she's been playing and the crowd support, what do you expect it to be like tomorrow?
HEATHER YOUNG: Loud. I expect it to be loud. (Laughter).
You know, it's actually -- you know, she is playing great. She's playing phenomenal golf. So I expect her to have a lot of fans. I expect her to play well, and I expect her to out-drive me on every hole, so I'll have a lot of shots into the green first.

Q. Wonder if when you and Jeremy dissect everything about your day and his day, or is it kind of, 'I don't want to talk about golf'; how does that work?
HEATHER YOUNG: We talk very little about golf. In fact, most of the time, I don't even know what they have shot, because I try to just keep my nose to the ground. So we do not -- if I asked him something, he would be glad to go over it, because he loves golf.
But we don't really -- we don't talk much about it. So I don't even know what we do talk about but it's not golf usually.

Q. Was there a point in the closing holes where you realized you were tied for the lead?
HEATHER YOUNG: When I putted out on the last hole. I do not look at leaderboards, I never have, because I kind of -- you know, every hole, I'm just trying to make the best score I can whether I'm going to miss the cut or whether I have a five-shot lead.
So I just try to play each hole the way it sets up for me to make the best score I can.

Q. You've played in this tournament quite a few times and are familiar with the course, but this is so far the best result you've ever had here. Is there anything that doesn't fit about this course or has fit in the past?
HEATHER YOUNG: Honestly I probably had the lowest expectations this year coming in, and that's probably -- because there have been other years where I've been playing really well coming into this week.
Last week I was playing really well till the very end, and I was not -- I was not very positive Wednesday evening before I started out, so I just -- again, I'm just trying to stick to the process.
I did not expect to be -- of course I have a goal. Every week you have a goal to play well, absolutely I had that goal, but I didn't want to putt any expectations on myself.

Q. Well, this is a really bad segue, but when you were talking about what you expected seeing from Lorena tomorrow, I was going to ask what you expected out of yourself; apparently nothing, now, right?
HEATHER YOUNG: Well, I don't have like to use that word, expectations. I really try hard to stay away from it.
It's going to be a tough day, I'm sure. There's going to be a lot going on. It's going to be very easy to get distracted. So what I expect -- the one thing I expect out of myself is to keep my head on straight; keep my head on straight and not let distractions get in the way.
If I hit bad shots, I hit bad shots, but I don't want to mentally hit them.

Q. (About feeding off another player in the group).
HEATHER YOUNG: That definitely happens, and me getting paired with Karen Stupples probably set off my game some. We are actually very good friends and we actually rode it. We birdied some of the same holes and bogeyed some of the same holes. But definitely that's a possibility; if she gets on a run, it somewhat forces you to focus more on birdies, because you're seeing them.

Q. It seems like the greens are really, really hard, and the fairways are really, really soft; is that accurate, and is it usually like that and how do you cope with that?
HEATHER YOUNG: The firm greens is definitely what you would expect. I have gotten some mud on the ball in the fairway, which I didn't expect, and I guess they water the fairways more than the greens, I don't know.
Definitely the later in the day, it just gets tougher and you just know that my second to last hole, I was -- I didn't have much of a chance, because it was a 6-iron yardage and I pitched it short of the hole and rolled into the rough. And that's just what happens in majors. And if I have a 7-iron, I'm not going to carry that bunker. So you just sometimes have to take what you can get.

Q. What hole?
HEATHER YOUNG: It was No. 8, the par 3.

Q. You spoke about your lower expectations coming in here, was there a point yesterday where you suddenly thought, hey, this may be a good week, or was it more a cumulative thing?
HEATHER YOUNG: No, I would say it's more of a cumulative thing. There's definitely not one tipping point or anything. And it is still very early in the week. It's just like we're making the turn. So you cannot get too far ahead of yourself at the midway point.

Q. (No microphone).
HEATHER YOUNG: I'll just tell myself, you're getting ahead of yourself and it's one shot at a time. You're right here, and wherever you are at that point, I'm right in the middle of the 12th fairway, I'm not at the finish yet, I'm still running.
ASHLEY CUSHMAN: Thank you, Heather, and good luck this weekend.

End of FastScripts

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